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Amy Hynd Joined: November 8th 2008
Logged in: November 30th 2011
Logged in: November 30th 2011
Travel Blog Posts
Three years! It was three years ago exactly since I set up this blog. I never did finish blogging my trip, it took too long on slow internet! My last entry saw me about to arrive in Alice Springs. From there I caught the Ghan to Darwin, flew to Broome, toured down to Perth and flew to Sydney. Stayed at the same flat and work in an office for a few weeks. My cousin Sarah came to stay and we climbed the Harbour Bridge. Then HelpXed on a farm in Alexandra, Victoria for a couple of weeks, went to Mildura via Melbourne. Stayed in Mildura for 3 months, doing farm work and orange packing. Back to Sydney to bus it to Brisbane followed by Airlie Beach to sail around the Whitsundays. Flew to Fiji for a ... read more
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The next morning we packed up camp and headed out to Kings Canyon for our 3 hour walk. It was a hard walk! At least the first part was anyway; the hill we had to climb to reach the top was very very steep! Kings Canyon (270m high) was beautiful with views of the vast nothingness out there. We saw the Lost City and the Garden of Eden. We finished the walk late morning and headed off to cook up our last lunch before we started the long drive to Alice Springs, where we arrived that evening. This trip was great; we drove over 3000km from Adelaide to Alice Springs entertaining ourselves on the journey playing bus cricket, reading and sleeping! I loved how there was was nothing for hundreds of km's apart from the odd ... read more
Doing the base walk
So the next morning we were supposed to go the sunrise viewing of Uluru but the clouds were so low there was no point. Doc said he had never seen cloud on Uluru, so we were seeing something a bit different! We went to the base of Uluru to do the base walk all the way round. We started at 6.45am and completed the 9km walk. It doesn't look that big but it is! You can see how low the cloud was from my photo's - most of the rock was covered! But it had mostly lifted by the time we finished. After that we went to the cultural centre where we learnt more about Urluru, the Aboriginal stories and the management of the area. Kata Tjuta was next - the dome shaped rocks. After that ... read more
Middle of nowhere!
The next day we were up at 5am for the long drive to Coober Pedy where we arrived at 2pm. Coober Pedy is roughly half way to Uluru. On the way we stopped at a salt lake that Doc (the tour guide) said is normally dry but today it had water. You could see the salt that had dried on the floor around the outside of the lake. Getting to Coober Pedy we had a little tour of the town where we went into the underground church. A lot of the population of 3000 lives underground because in the summer the temperature can reach over 50 degrees! The town is famous for opal mining, a lot of Australia and probably the world's opals come from here. We saw a short film, had a talk about the ... read more
Cool caravans at Melrose from 1900
Got picked up at the very early time of 6.10am and left Adelaide for the start of our 6-day Adventure Tours tour Adelaide to Alice Springs. We drove a LOT on this trip, some days covering 700km, with nothing inbetween. After a lot of driving and a few stops we arrived at the small town of Quorn which was to be our base for 2 nights. We were staying in an old mill. That afternoon we did a 3 hour, 9km hike to the top of a mountain called Dutchman's Stern. That was a hard walk, but the views were absolutely stunning! The shapes of the hills and just the view of the nothingness out there was great. Had Emu, Camel and Kangeroo for tea! The next day we went to Wilpena Pound, a huge natural ... read more
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So we got to Adelaide late that afternoon. I was staying in Backpack Oz as Sarah and Chris who I did OzIntro with in December work there. That evening I met the others from the tour at a cute pub called Grace Emily where we played pool, listened to the band and drunk varying amounts of wine and tequilla. It was a good night, though it did have a bit of a dodgy end. The next day I had a tour booked of Barossa wine valley with Tanja, Philip and James from the tour. Waking up with a hangover, a wine tour was the last thing I wanted to do! The valley was just over an hour away and on the way we stopped at this place with a very big rocking horse and this cool ... read more
Approaching the Grampians
The second day of the tour we saw a few more stacks before heading for the Grampians. The Grampians is a national park, named after the Grampians in Scotland. We went to the Grampians culture centre, where we learnt about the Aboriginal heritage here. The scenery here was stunning, amazing views! We spent the night at Halls Gap where there were lots of kangeroos everywhere. In the morning there were loads on the grass outside our cabins! That morning we did a big hike/scramble at the other end of the park to the top, it was very windy and again great views. I know I keep saying that but they really are! The rest of the day was spent travelling to Adelaide, our destination.... read more
Torquay
First some information that may come in handy one day. Picking locks using a hairgrip does work! I spent a couple of days in Melbourne after Tasmania and one day I locked my locker key inside my locker. After a bit of effort with the hairgrip it opened; I didn't think it would actually work!! So Friday 22nd May saw me depart Melbourne for my Great Ocean Road and Grampians tour. Departing very early (not as early as some of my later starts!) we left Melbourne where it got gradually thicker in fog, you could hardly see the car in front! Have a look of my photo of the surf shops for the fog. First stop was Torquay, home of Ripcurl and Quiksilver, lots of surf shops and great clothes here. Along the Great Ocean Road ... read more
Westbury
I had decided a few days into my Tasmania trip that it would be great to hire a car for a couple of days. So I did that the day after Cradle Mountain. I chose a little Hyundi Getz from a place near the airport and off I went for two days. Some of my driving lessons were done in this car so I was familar with it. I had booked a bed at a town called bernie on the north west coast for that night so that was my destination. I wanted to be there before it got dark, so I as long as I left enough time to get there I could stop where I want. First stop was at Westbury, a very quite village where you could have heard a pin drop. Had ... read more
Sheffield
So I was back in Launceston and I still hadn't been to Cradle Mountain. So I booked a tour. I got picked up and it was just the tour guide and I! Still, it was a very comfortable drive in a Galaxy, nice change from mini-buses! It was about 3 hours away, we stopped once at Sheffield - the town of the murals, we murals everywhere! Every year they have a mural painting competition. Apparently there are a lot of 'town of . . ' in Tasmania. The tour guide showed me a town that was trying to become the town of tapeiry. I thought this was animal! It is actually shrubs cut into different shapes. There were a few in the town but most were still starting growing. It would be nice to see in ... read more
